Transnistria, the no-man’s land between the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, rarely makes it into the news. With the exception of the short war between 1990 and 1992, when the country was fighting for independence only to later sink back into east block oblivion. It is precisely these kind of isolated places that interest the French photographer Cédric Viollet, who has already been on photographic exploration trips to Lesotho and Hong Kong.

In Elliot Ross’s series, Plainsmen, we are called to the interior American West—a place which, from an outsider’s perspective, is generally romanticized and oversimplified. The region is too often ignored unless it is politically convenient, and it is sometimes flippantly referred to as flyover country. As a person who grew up in rural Colorado, Ross understands the complexities faced by residents in this part of the country. Though the project is sequenced with photographs of people and places, our awareness is continuously being redirected toward the younger generation. They embody the heritage and lifestyle of their parents and connote values typically associated with rural American communities, including honesty and hard work. Despite this, their futures remain uncertain due to growing social and economic distress. Ross poignantly brings this dilemma to our attention and asks us to consider the future of the West and its residents—not the West of mythology, but that of fragile reality.

In Elliot Ross’s series, Plainsmen, we are called to the interior American West—a place which, from an outsider’s perspective, is generally romanticized and oversimplified. The region is too often ignored unless it is politically convenient, and it is sometimes flippantly referred to as flyover country. As a person who grew up in rural Colorado, Ross understands the complexities faced by residents in this part of the country. Though the project is sequenced with photographs of people and places, our awareness is continuously being redirected toward the younger generation. They embody the heritage and lifestyle of their parents and connote values typically associated with rural American communities, including honesty and hard work. Despite this, their futures remain uncertain due to growing social and economic distress. Ross poignantly brings this dilemma to our attention and asks us to consider the future of the West and its residents—not the West of mythology, but that of fragile reality.

Of all the images that the photographer Clémentine Schneidermann and the art director Charlotte James have made of (and with) children in South Wales, few show interior scenes. Here is one, in which, amid the gloom and clatter of a community center, two figures are brightly lit. A young girl with blond ringlets gives the camera a bored glare, while a red-haired boy, wearing a luxe hillock of green fake fur, flashes us his newly augmented fingernails. Beside his sullen companion, the boy looks like a prepubescent night-club impresario, or a glamorous tween art star. In a photographic project that invites children to style and invent themselves, he might be the most daring of all. Elsewhere, you’ll spot him in platform boots and off-the-shoulder brown velour, his face full of cheek, and his cigarette delicately plied.

For half a decade, Fred Ramos has photographed the longstanding political, social and environmental crises that are driving migration in the region.

The photographer Argus Paul Estabrook remembers his mother calling him from the hospital, and he remembers flying from Seoul to be with his family in the United States. But much of his father’s battle with pancreatic cancer remains a blur. By the time he was diagnosed, it had already reached Stage 4, and when it was all said and done, Estabrook‘s father would live for only three more weeks. “Time was really jumbled like that one drawer where nothing is in the right place,” the photographer admits. “Memories become fractured and mixed together.”

An artistic residence in Norway (Halsnoy Cloister, 2013) ignites a passion with the North. Iceland, then Scandinavia further fuels the flame, revealing a personal confrontation with an endless space, a passionate and brutal encounter.

Playing with light and shadow, José Sarmento Matos captures barbecues and commuters in ways that echo Caravaggio’s oil paintings.